Defective by Design (what could that mean? DRM, of course) have announced
this day the 'Day against DRM'. This means more than just
copy protection, it includes the online censoring of very popular
devices, and DRM itself can't work 'reliably' without permanent
online monitoring and controlling of anything you do, which doesn't
only violate human rights but opens barn gates for cyber attacks
in a dimension unheard of so far.
Read the six postulates and more about this, and think
twice if you need the must-have everybody's buying right now.

Nov. 25, 2009

Computer video isn't as difficult anymore
with high performance CPU's and myriads of tools and software.
But there's still things to consider.
First, what do we use for shooting? European (PAL) users should
be aware that most cheap camcorders simply can't produce material
compatiblle to their TV standard, not even 25p or 50i, and the
30p produced at maximum are just good for stuttering pans. Not
to mention the all so often crappy implementation of the highly
praised AVC video compression.
OK. but if we manage to record anything worth it, what could
we use for a decent edit? Some recent experiences lured me to
add a page on current
software.

Feb. 5, 2009

Flatscreen TV's issues still current:
watch very closely if that 100 or 200Hz flat TV you're interested
in would first place deinterlace current standard TV sources
to 50 fps or 60 Hz progressive at least, which would indeed be
nothing too difficult or exotic to ask for at all.

For DVD
authoring, comments added about some very nice freeware tools. But consider switching
to external harddisks soon, they are getting cheaper per Gigabyte
than DVD's and are a lot more versatile, especially when coming
in a multimedia player enclosure.

Sept. 5, 2008

A recent test of medimum sized full
HD TV's concluded that you wouldn't need full HD at that size.
Dead wrong ! A closer look at current sets reveals that there
are basically two quality levels when it comes to rendering standard
TV: almost all 'HD ready' sets are delivering rubbish here, while
nearly any 'full HD' set meanwhile looks good at least for low
motion content. They have the better chipsets, these full HD's
! And they're getting affordable, so for anything bigger than
a postcard, this is the way to go. For the larger ones at least,
100Hz technology shuld of course be mandatory as well, or keep
your tube for a while.

VirtualDub
now has input plugins for almost any major format (Video9, Quicktime,
MPEG2). Can easily be found by search engines. Alas, there still
is no tool adding pulldown to those crappy 15-or 30 Hz digicam-mov's
if you're living in a PAL country.

A little more on motion, and some cleanup done. Have a happy
new year.

Sept. 23, 2007

There is an interesting benchmark on H.264 encoding with x.264 on
different CPU's. The differences are impressive, but note that
x.264 can make use of multi core CPUs, so results would be less
extreme with encoders using only one core. What is eminent: Memory
speed is not important.

On the IFA2007 in Berlin, just
anybody showed flat screens with HD content. Only a very few
showed fast motion, and many might have thought their show was
impressive, but for a critical eye most of them were not. 100
Hz (REAL 100 Hz, synthesizing intermediate frames!!) or flashing
backlight are the minimum requirements to compete with a classical
CRT anyhow.
Back from the fair, in a local department store, there was not
a single one among a hundred or so flat TVs that showed anything
remotely resembling a good picture from public TV (that's what
people are watching, usually). Feathered scan lines instead of
a decent deinterlacing, faces looking like putty dipped in grainy
slime, actors diluting into gravel clouds when moving, and in
between, on the lowest board of the shelf, two shy CRT TVs, showing
the same pictures in a really decent quality.
OK, some still videos in HD format sometimes look well, but if
these flatsets can't even deinterlace standard TV properly, what
about 1080i HD? (On deinterlacing, see 100fps.com).
It's even more annoying when we compare a this to a digital satellite
card in a PC, with a good software decoder like Cyberlink's.
There, standard TV (16:9 PAL) looks almost like HD, even motion
looks good; at least if the monitor is a fast one. Place something
like this, with a good 24" PC monitor, beneath these bloated
flat screen gadgets, and they will look like grandpa's nickelodeon
retrieved from the attic.
As mentioned here some time ago, on the DM&S site there is a paper
about the problems of current LCDs (the key issue of it is simple and obvious, more here).
Hopefully, all flat TV chipset designers will read it and their
executives won't cut down on quality, thinking their customer
are just cattle, content with anything. As a customer, be aware
that even the term "100 Hz" may surely be abused, so
have a really close look that you get what you're shopping for.

A really useful H.264
acceleration, absolutely necessary to play high definition video
from HD-DVD discs on a PC, now comes with the Nvidia 8500/8600
and the ATI X2000 series graphics cards. Most versions will be
for PCI-Express, but according to announcements there will also
be AGP versions from both manufacturers, for not so brand new
mainboards. There is already a patch
available for the PowerDVD 7 Ultra player containing the decoders
to support full acceleration with these graphics cards.

May 15, 2007

How to save HD films to normal DVD's
is frequent question. The last option usually considered is good
old MPEG2, but it may actually be the best one. MPEG2 HD plays
fluently on many current machines, something that can't at all
be stated for AAC, and there is a very good MPEG2 encoder (HC-Encoder)
that gives astonishing results with as little as 9000/15000 (avg./max.)
kbps (for full HD!). Some movies even encode perfectly with 6000/12000.
So one typical HD movie may fit onto one simple DVDR. If this
doesn't work, a dual layer DVDR will. Details and a bug workaround
on the HDTV page.
The AVC/AAC page has been
updated as well, an here's a recipe how to use VirtualDub with DirectShow
filters.

Apr 20,2007

Updated the DV page for quick access
to the best recipes for backup,
cleaning that
crappy amateur camcorder footage, end encoding to DVD in the highest quality possible.
Plus ultimate gamma
settings for camcorder.

Apr 02, 2007

EMI has just chosen
to offer anything DRM free for a little more money. It may be a little early to celebrate
the end of DRM though, as ideologies like this are quite sticky,
but it shows that the customer can't be fooled all the time.

There is no reason any more why camcorders
should record on tape or disc or why they should be bigger than
a matchbox, even HD ones. Current products have fallen years
behind technology. Is it because of executives without a clue
about technology, trying to milk old cows? The same reason why
they still believe in DRM? Finally at least there is one company,
Streamburst, proposing watermarks instead
of DRM.
If you think about HD, there are some interesting data about
accelerated AVC decoding with newer graphics cards on the Elecard
page. Alas, the results are not nearly as impressive as we are
used to with MPEG2.

Nov 18, 2006

Talking about copyright paranoia and
trivial patents is pretty useless as long as it's mandatory for
politicians to be computer illiterate. 1984 is past and Orwell's
prophecies are kid's stuff, compared to the real future. The
rest of it you may sneer about here. Learn about DRM and the the Six Postulates.

With Windows Vista ante portas (for
no reasons), some may finally think about upgrading to XP, as
it could indicate XP may now be finally debugged. Yet there are
still some issues, like the molasses mouse. Unbelievably, this hasn't been mended in any
update so far. It may perhaps even be inherited to Vista. The
cure you'll find nowhere
else on the web.

Meanwhile some HD screens are supporting
full Euro HD (i.e. have 1080 lines). They might also support
interlacing, but it's not always for sure. Even some tests ignore
this issue entirely. Apparently, most people writing about TV
don't have a clue about the basics at all. Some however do: on
the DM&S site there is a paper
about the problems of current LCDs (in German, but with many
pictures).
With HD in shops, what's next? 3d? As long as we use screens
for TV viewing it will remain a funfair attraction, but nevertheless
there are new encoding and recording technologies to speculate about.

Oct 05, 2006

FhG offers tools to convert stereo to
surround, sample songs and more on mp3surround, and the codec of course. AC3filter is
a useful set of codecs/tools for - guess what - AC3 sound. Added
a capacities table
to the DVD page.

June 25, 2006

Added some links
about the basics of video and an update to the Deshaker page.
Remember the news of Apr. 03 (below)? now with the world cup,
the press is full of complaints about flat TVs. Wasn't it to
be expected? Yet until very recently, I haven't seen any test
or review even mentioning the problem.

May 05, 2006

If that's not news: Nero released their
AAC audio reference encoder/decoder free for private use.

Apr 03, 2006

HD is gathering ground now also in Europe.
Yet the HD screens you can buy don't fit European standards.
They are 720 lines (US standard), so 576i has to be deinterlaced
and upscaled by an odd factor, while 1080i has to be deinterlaced
and downscaled. So standard TV at least definitely looks worse.
This also applies to US customers watching old materials on their
HD screens, but there it's hard to make it worse than worse.
Currently in Europe I'd wait until they make the appropriate
screens for the standard. Otherwise you may be tempted to dump
your stuff again in a very few years, causing a lot of unnecessary
junk.
Maybe we'll soon be relieved of such problems, when ultra light
ultra high resolution display glasses will emerge. These will
even change our entire life. More about it here.
What I can recommend already if you're planning that dream vacation,
to get a HD (High Definition) camcorder right now, so your films
won't appear ugly in 30 years from now. Sony's model looks very
good in tests. I only wonder why it still uses tape instead of
a harddisk. p.s.: don't mix up HDD with HDV. HDD simply means
harddisk camcorder, nothing else. Only HDV models deliver high
definition video, those are the ones to go for !!

Jan 01, 2006

Happy new year ! Some experiments with
AVC/AAC formats. Hardware
for acceleration and stand alone playback is still missing, so
this is not for practical use (except for little web films or
AAC audio),
but we're curious, aren't we.

Sep 23, 2005

Some new tests with lossless or almost lossless compression.
It turned out that Huffyuv can also be lossy and that the all
too common use of YUY2 is of evil in quite some unexpected ways
(case1, case2).

Jun 05, 2005

Finished some tests with Nero Recode 2 (H.263 MPEG4 encoding). Results:
HDTV Encoding speeds of 5 fps or better are easily obtained (1920x1080!).
Playback works almost smooth, even though there isn't yet an
accelerator for it in any graphics card.
You need Nero Vision Express and the Nero Digital plugin, then
use Nero Recode to convert your files. For Playback, there are
some more options, as what you get is an MPEG4 file. More.

Apr 30, 2005

Some updates to HDTV (XVID encoding)
and to TV-Out.

Feb 10, 2005

Some more contributions to the TV-Out page.
New filter set and test
results for analog or DV video and VirtualDub 1.6

Feb 05, 2005

Some tests with ATI graphics cards triggered
an update to the TV-Out
page.

Jan 05, 2005

VirtualDub
1.6 comes with a new 'levels' filter that does gamma correction,
something really much wanted for. For example try a setting of about 1.25 and
add about 10% color to give your videos that 'professional' look.

Dec 09, 2004

FhG-IIS have released their MP3 Surround
format. It can compress 5.1 channels in 160 kbps or above, and
the resulting files can be played with older 2 channel decoders
as well. An evaluation software is for download at their site. The encoder is valid until the end
of 2005, the decoder is unlimited.

Oct 03, 2004

MP3directcut
is a freeware tool that cuts MP3 as well as MP2 and has a graphical
wave display etc.

Sept 18, 2004

Some updates with the DV and MicroMV
pages.

July 25, 2004

Finally a cutting tool for HDTV: MPG2cut2.
It's still beta but it works. Only issue that the current beta
version eliminates all flags (bitrate, aspect ratio, frame size
etc.) from the output file. Use DVDpatcher to correct this or use the latest
alpha version that is labeled "unstable" but seems
to work quite OK.

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